OPINION: Board rigid

People keep telling me the games market is in bad shape, yet we grew our UK business by 150 per cent this year. I don’t believe any other games company could do that. There is no doubt that times are tough, bad debts are up, and that cash and banking facilities are at a premium in times like this. However, we have continued to grow for a number of reasons.

The easy win is to drive quick sales via hot licences and TV-advertising, but the critical thing is getting people to play games. That is the only long-term strategy that makes sense for a games company. For the toy companies like Hasbro, Mattel, Character and so on, the toy model is the easy option – loads of TVRs, low focus on gameplay. We focus on gameplay and on getting people to play games. We only bring our games to retail once they are ready – both in terms of gameplay and consumer awareness. This reduces the risk to retailers of stocking new products. For example, we have two award-winning board games – Quelf and Flapdoodle – that we could launch in 2009 and shift tens of thousands of boxes, but that doesn’t create the next brand that retailers can rely on to deliver year after year.

Never one to hide his light under a bushel, Imagination Games? forthright boss Shane Yeend penned these words from Down Under to explain how his company continues to thrive in a games market that seems to have forgotten the meaning of innovation?